Appotech DM8261 Controller

We recently received a Verbatim Store N Go with an Appotech DM8261 Controller for data recovery. Consistently in the usb flash drive data recovery industry, usb flash drives using the Appotech DM8261 controller are unrecoverable due to the encryption the DM8261 uses. Many attempts by my data recovery colleagues and others have been made to recognize the XOR pattern of this controller and it has been recently confirmed the Appotech DM8261 controller uses XOR in conjunction with AES-256 encryption. For an inexpensive controller which is fairly unpopular, usb flash data recoveries using the DM8261 are extremely difficult if the controller fails. Fortunately after about two weeks of work, I was able to successfully recover the data on the one we received once I figured out the XOR using the encryption key from the original NAND. I have also seen no-name usb flash drives usually given out at trade shows for free with the same controller but fortunately in the past, a “chip off” recovery was not required since the pcb was able to be repaired and restore functionality. Now that I am able to successfully restore usb flash drives which use the DM8261, these type of “chip off” data recoveries should be pretty straight forward.